We are a country masterful at banter. At the football, the crowd is full of characters with cutting quips that make both supporting sides laugh. Where is this knockabout wit in our online reviews? Sure, tell us about the lack of service, cold food and ridiculous $14 charge for putting your bag in the cloakroom. But could you not do it with a little more snap? It’s time for the gloves to come off; to let our creativity sing!

To get you started, I offer a selection of handcrafted and sometimes partially plagiarised lines that you might like to include as your own, or simply see as a jumping-off point for your next scathing online restaurant review.

Insult the food

While words like “cold”, “congealed”, “doughy”, “slimy” and “dull” all carry weight, perhaps more creative would be to say something like, “The food was so boring, waitstaff have been known to fall asleep while carrying it to the table”. The one line I always wished I’d used back when I was reviewing is, “The pavlova here is a disappointment so profound, it makes getting dumped the night before the school formal feel like a mild inconvenience”.

Insult the menu

“The menu here is like a dog licking his balls – proof that just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should.” If you’re keen-eyed, you’d have seen me use this one
myself. Or perhaps, “The food could only be more pretentious if it arrived carrying a copy of Foucault’s The Order of Things”.

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Insult the chef

This is particularly effective if the chef is over 25 and starting to worry about their relevance. Try describing them as the “has-been of the green beans”, “a
dining-room dinosaur”, “the master of mean cuisine” or, at Christmas, as “the pan-rattling ghost of good meals past”. If you want to step up the ire, my personal favourite is, “The sooner they stop cooking, the happier we’ll both be.”

Insult the room

Try, “The fundamental problem with dining at this restaurant is the sudden realisation that there is never a wrecking ball around when you need one”. Or, “The dining room is as elegant as a down-market Serbian coin laundry with a vermin problem. I jumped nervously every time I caught movement in my peripheral vision. But it was just a staff member scurrying past, trying to avoid eye contact lest they be forced to provide service.”

Insult the cooking

“The worst thing about food here is eating it. The best thing? With luck, you may survive” is a good place to start, but I prefer, “The food here would be a good reason for kids to run away from home”. If the place is fancy and expensive, saying, “The cooking here has all the elegance and precision of a chubby-fisted toddler drawing with a blunt crayon” will certainly cut through.

Please see these suggestions as merely a starting point. But remember to always stay classy, and to always punch up, not down. As you sharpen your turn of phrase, use it against the pompous places with steep prices rather than the local joint doing their best and charging you peanuts.

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